To be surprised at £18 per hour for gardening?

[Spagnolia]

We are struggling to keep the weeds and brambles at bay and started to think we might get someone to help.

A guy was recommended by neighbour but I almost fell off my chair when I found out he charges £18 per hour for general weeding, grass cutting etc using our tools and equipment.

My junior doctor child gets £14 per hour!

We are far from the South East.

Do you have gardening help?
What is the going rate at the moment?

You’re not comparing like for like.

The gardener probably isn’t getting paid for e.g travel time between clients. They presumably have expenses to account for, like any tools, running a vehicle, petrol etc. They also aren’t getting any pension from an employer, or sick pay or parental leave etc etc etc.

@Annabel073 ok that's good to know I'm paying the going rate. I'm just outside London

My gardener is £22 per hour in the south east and I agree. It's just labour he has no plant knowledge or landscaping experience

22.50 per hour. It’s not what he’s doing for you, but that’s what his skills command. I always thought 22.50 was cheap. It’s effectively seasonal!

Forgot to say...it also depends where you live and how long for. If you live remotely and will be my only customer that morning (with travel) I'd want at least £50 to turn up for 2/2.5hrs.
If you lived in the next street to my other customer, I'd probably charge £35.

How dare a lowly gardener want to be able to cover his costs and still have a chance in hell of taking home a living wage! The bloody cheek of it.

I charge £20 an hour, the going rate in this area. I paid for the course I did to become qualified, buy all my own tools, safety gear and insurance. I get no paid holiday or sick pay and I work outside, all year round, in all weathers. My knowledge range includes botany, entomology, plant pathology, mycology, chemistry, genetics, the latest developments in pest control and fertilisers. I also have knowledge of wildlife and conservation and can plan out garden beds to good aesthetic effect, year round colour, scent and structure as well as benefits to wildlife. I'm familiar with about 15,000 varieties of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants, as well as fruits and vegetables. Anyone paying me is getting a good deal.

Mine is a day rate of £300 but he only comes for two 1 day jobs (spring and autumn). He works long days so I would say equates to about £30 per hour (and he takes the garden waste away, which would otherwise cost to have removed).

I found someone locally who charged £15 per hour , minimum time 2 hours. He doesnt weed, or cut grass! . Sure a large part of gardening is weeding and grass cutting??

I'd expect a cleaner or gardener to charge more tbh

Your junior doctor's wages will increase where as £18 is pretty much the maximum that teh gardener will ever learn. FWIW Aldi pay 13.25ph too and they will have employee benefits unavailable to the self employed gardener.

This is the going rate where I live too, going up to £22 in some cases, and I'm not talking about someone with a horticultural degree but an unskilled labourer who mows and weeds. I do most of the gardening myself now.

YABU. £18 was standard 3 years ago, given the skills shortage now I’d expect to pay anything up to £25. He’s self employed, remember what you pay includes travel time and no paid holidays etc. The underpayment of junior doctors is irrelevant.

Indeed. It’s too little for such skills!

Don't forget that 'gardeners' also have periods of no work at all, are very high risk for work related serious injuries or sun related damage and osteoarthritis, have to pay commercial waste prices, pay sky high insurance, frequently have to give up work early and are often very highly qualified - not just in plants, but in chemicals, operating multiple types of heavy machinery and so on.

Oh, and they're expected to be these experts out in the freezing cold.

£18 = approx salary of £30k. And that's if they do a 7 hour day, 5 days a week. Which, with travel between jobs is very unlikely.

As others have said, that money also needs to cover business expenses, NI, pension, sick and holiday leave. So is probably closer to £20k a year. Hardly living it up. How low a salary do you think they should expect?

It's actually more shocking that junior doctors are only paid about £26k tbh.

I pay £33 per hour for our gardeners so £18 sounds pretty good to me

YABU, a roaring snob and a stealth bragger. Pull up your own weeds if you don't want to pay someone.

Just checked, I actually pay £24 per hour. still good value

It worked for Sarah Raven, after all...

Its pretty grim hiring an older man to work a manual job for less than minimum wage.

This made me 😂

I only know one gardener, she charges £20 an hour.

Aren't you embarrassed about that? Less than minimum wage?

You say that like it's a good thing to be paying someone less than minimum wage to do a physically demanding job after working his whole life. Shameful.

I pay £20 ph

How much were you expecting?